Thoughts on photography and what inspires it - books, poetry, film, art. And various other ramblings.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Michael Wesely... oh, no, it's not

At first glance, these "Netropolis" pictures look to be Michael Wesely's, of the reconstruction of Berlin, re-modelling of MoMA - but they aren't.

In fact they're by Michael Najjar (a funky if slightly annoying website...). He has a lot of other stuff on his site - most of it a lot slicker and some rather more conceptual (I rather like the idea of his Iraq pictures, but not quite their execution)

Back to Netropolis, whereas Wesely produced his pictures from a fixed point with long or multiple exposures, Najjar takes multiple images and combines them:

"The complexity of the city is visually apparent in Michael Najjar's multi-layered photographic prints. Like Fritz Lang whose 1926 film Metropolis envisioned the futuristic city, Najjar’s Netropolis series carries the notion a step further, positing the city as a locus of computer networks and digital information. In Netropolis/Shanghai, 2003, he photographed from the tallest building in the city of Shanghai. Using a conventional camera, Najjar shot to the north, south, east and west. These images were converted to digital files and combined into a single image that was manipulated on the computer. In the final stage the work is converted back and produced as a traditional silver gelatin print. The resulting image gives the viewer a sense of seeing through time".

(There are more detailed descriptions of his work on the website - but it's all Flash junk)

Traces

"The Muse of photography is not one of Memory's daughters, but Memory herself." John Berger

"The photograph isn't what was photographed. It's something else. It's a new fact." Gary Winogrand

"The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It’s not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You’re not supposed to look at the thing, you’re supposed to look through it. It’s a window.” John Szarkowski